Washington – The State Department said Monday it will review the role its diplomatic security agents play at photo opportunities following a weekend incident in Uzbekistan in which a reporter was removed from a meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and the Uzbek president.
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Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and press office would look into the matter after a DS agent was filmed helping Uzbek guards remove the Washington Post reporter. The reporter had asked Uzbekistan’s authoritarian President Islam Karimov a question about human rights. Karimov, whose government has been widely criticized for human rights abuses, did not answer the question.
“Our press team and diplomatic security work hard around the world on these trips, as well as here in the department, to work for access for journalists,” Trudeau told reporters. “However, we’re not perfect. We’re going to take a look at what happened, if there’s ways that we can review and fix how we do these process we absolutely will.”
Videotape of Sunday’s incident in Samarkand shows a U.S. and an Uzbek security agent prodding the reporter to leave the room. An American-accented voice is also heard saying “take her out,” after the reporter asked the question.
Trudeau denied suggestions that the sensitive nature of the question had anything to do with the incident.
“I would say categorically her removal had nothing to do with the content of the question,” she said, calling it “a logistical issue.”
She noted that the event was not a press conference, where questions are expected, but rather what the State Department calls a “photo spray.” She added that, as is customary at the end of such events, journalists are escorted out and that this was under way when the reporter asked her question.